Page 33 of Faking the Heat

“Hard to forget. You literally fell into my arms, Sparkles.”

The nickname slips out without thought, the way it always has, but this time it hangs between us weighted with everything we haven't said. Her cheeks flush, and for a second I see the girl she was, twenty-two, mortified, coffee dripping off my jaw while her earrings threw disco lights across the café walls.

“You were so calm about it,” she says, almost to herself. “I ruined your shirt. You'd just gotten back from-” she pauses, catching herself, “-from overseas. And I assaulted you with caffeine.”

“You were worth the dry cleaning.”

She laughs, a real sound, and some of the tension bleeds out of her shoulders. “You called me Sparkles right then. In front of your sister. I wanted to die.”

“I thought it was accurate. You were practically a solar flair.”

“I was wearing chandelier earrings Becca dared me to buy.” She touches her current earrings. “I'd forgotten about that until just now.”

I haven’t forgotten. I remember everything: the way she felt against me when I caught her, all elbows and apologies, the way she smelled like vanilla and panic. The way I didn’t want to let go, even with hot coffee soaking through my shirt.

“I remember what’s important.” I reach over and grab her chair dragging it closer to me. Mandy goes very still. The café noise fades to static around us-espresso machines and conversation and the bell over the door, all of it distant.

“Sterling,” she says, my name barely a whisper.

“Yeah?” I slide my hand to her jaw, slow enough that she could stop me. She doesn’t.

She opens her mouth, closes it. Whatever she was going to say, she swallows it down and reaches for safer ground. “Kayla's staring at us.”

I don't look away from her, lean in and whisper. “Let her stare.” Her eyes stay on mine and I can feel her breath, uneven, against my mouth.

“Cereal,” she says. The word is barely air.

It lands like a physical blow somewhere below my ribs. I pull back, putting distance between us that feels like a small, deliberate loss. “At least you didn’t wait for our fake wedding night.”

She laughs, short and a little breathless, and shoves her glasses up her nose. But she doesn’t look at me again right away, and I notice.

We finish our coffee in silence, but it’s not empty. It’s full of all the things we’re going to have to say, and the knowledge that, when we do, the other person will actually listen.

That’s how you start a fire, I think. Not with a spark, but with enough oxygen to keep it alive.

Chapter sixteen

Midnight Confessions

Sterling

Midnight is a heavy thing in this loft. The industrial windows leak the orange glow of the Chicago streetlights, but I'm not looking at them. I'm lying on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling, running my thumb along my own jaw the way I did to hers at The Inked Teacup. The memory keeps replaying with the same relentless rhythm. The first crack of thunder rolls through the brickwork before I hear it in the sky, a violent, bone-shaking groan, a low-frequency warning, but I'm still thinking about the way she tasted like cold brew and something I don't have a name for yet.

The lights flicker once, twice, casting jagged, strobe-like glimmers across the exposed beams, and then die with a soft, final click. The hum of the refrigerator cuts out. The digital clock on the nightstand vanishes. The warehouse plunges into a darkness so thick I can almost feel it pressing against my skin. The only remaining sound is the sudden, frantic drumming of rain against the glass, a chaotic percussion that drowns out the quiet hum of my own breathing.

I don't move for a second, my military training keeping me still while my eyes adjust to the void. My years in the service taught me to respect the dark, to listen for the cadence of movement within it. Then I hear it. A soft scuffle from the kitchen, followed by the sharp, indignant yowl of a tri colored furball who clearly blames the weather on the nearest available human. Thankfully, that’s not me.

"Mandy?" I call out. My voice sounds rough, catching on the dry air of the bedroom. I clear my throat, the sound feeling loud in the vacuum of the power outage.

"I'm fine," her voice floats back, sounding small and slightly breathless. "Just currently losing a territorial dispute with a cat who thinks the darkness is a personal affront."

I grab my phone, the screen acting as a tiny, blinding beacon in the gloom. I find her in the kitchen, a silhouette against the stainless steel of the fridge. She's wearing one of my navy t-shirts, the one with the faded department logo on the chest that I thought I'd lost, and her auburn hair is a chaotic nest around her face. She looks vulnerable and beautiful in a way that makes the kiss from earlier flare up in my memory like a fresh burn.

"Search and rescue mission?" I ask, keeping my tone light to mask the way my pulse is currently hammering a rhythm that has nothing to do with the storm. I sweep the phone light across the counter, illuminating the scattered remains of her sketchbook and a half-eaten apple.

"Candles," she says, pulling open a drawer with more force than necessary. The rattle of silverware echoes through the cavernous space. "I know I saw them. Somewhere between the menus for the Thai place you like and the stack of mysterious Allen wrenches that seem to multiply in the dark."

I join her our shoulders brush, and the contact sends a jolt of static through my arm. My phone light cuts a beam across the counter and I watch as she tugs at a stubborn drawer, wrestling with it. She gives up, but before she can move to the next I step in, and go straight to the lower cabinet beside the fridge and pull it open. Inside, tucked behind a roll of duct tape, are the candles: tea lights mostly, and a few half-burned pillars that smell faintly of vanilla and old dust.